Vision, creativity and strength
in me, too. Once I decide what needs to be done, it has to
happen. Some may regard this as one of my less positive
attributes - I myself see it as a good quality."
Henry Pierre Heineken, the second-generation Heineken, was
Chairman during the years 1917-1940. He was a brewer with an
international vision, who spoke and wrote French, German and
English fluently. He had wide cultural interests - music was his
great passion. Having graduated as a chemist, he took a rather
more remote approach to managing the brewery. He set great
store by a strong liquidity position and a healthy balance sheet.
Alfred Henry Heineken inherited his father's gift for languages, his
cosmopolitan attitudes and his interest in culture. He also shared
his father's preference for a strong balance sheet, but was also
convinced of the importance of having direct control of the
company. In contrast to many other family companies, the third
generation at Heineken did not mark the beginning of the end,
but the beginning of a new episode.
Alfred Henry Heineken was born in Amsterdam on 4 November,
1923. He grew up with the idea that, as the third-generation
Heineken, he would one day take over management of the
brewery: "I was born to this job." Under his father's management,
the brewery had grown into an international group. Privately,
however, things went less well for the Heineken family and in
1942 it lost its majority interest in the brewery - much to the
chagrin of Alfred Heineken, who saw it as his duty to restore
control to the family. In the early fifties, using borrowed capital,
he acquired a majority shareholding in the brewery, which he
